Win or lose, Trump sullies America’s reputation

WIN or lose, Donald Trump, candidate of the Republican Party in this year’s presidential election, will cast a long shadow over the global reputation of the United States of America. The erratic, brash and braggart billionaire businessman has affected the U.S. so deeply that the world is puzzled whether they ever knew that country as well as they thought or the media projected. Few gave Mr Trump any chance of blitzing his way through the Republican primaries. By a combination of bluster, invectives, nonconformism, clever deployment of disinformation, and sheer braggadocio, he did what many thought he couldn’t. He bested the opposition within the Republican Party and, as the perfect political iconoclast of this election, virtually took the party’s ideologues and apparatchiks to the cleaners. Should he win, the U.S., not to talk of his party, would be changed, possibly forever, in ways even Americans themselves would find astonishing.
Mr Trump’s progress has been phenomenal. He started as a rank outsider, and has remained and frolicked in that position. For much of the campaign, he alienated Republican leaders, defied the establishment whether in politics or business, scorned Washington, and provoked into fury key political demographics like women and minorities. Yet, his appeal has not only been sustained, it has even flourished. Until about two weeks ago, he was virtually fighting alone, and was trailing in the polls. Now he has shocked pundits by outperforming his Democratic Party opponent, Hillary Clinton, in proportion to the efforts, resources, personnel and support put into the race. In contrast, Mrs Clinton has had the entire Democratic Party machine behind her, the support of all living U.S. ex-presidents, a disproportionate number of former intelligence chiefs, the creme de la creme of the entertainment and sport industries, the intelligentsia, and nearly all world leaders minus Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Yet, the race is an astonishing dead heat.
But the 2016 presidential election is more a reflection of the real America than a barometer of the persons and values of the candidates. The two candidates are a study in stark contrast, so the choice of who to vote for ought not to be as complicated as the general impression of the two candidates’ repugnant manners. A vote for Mr Trump will be clearly an endorsement of divisiveness, hate and bigotry, and a nostalgic attempt to retain the political and cultural demographics of a bygone era. On the other hand, a vote for Mrs Clinton will be an endorsement of the steadying sameness of the conventional but stultifying politics that has dominated and shaped American life for a long time, and the paradoxical safety which that politics represents. The world probably wants that predictability and safety. But, apparently, a huge number of Americans long for something else: some sort of revolution, some sort of change, perhaps a beguiling insularity and nationalism.
It is, however, significant that at a time when increasingly unstable global politics needs a strong, perceptive and dependable U.S. to provide leadership, no matter how imperfect, the American voter appears to be inured to the shifting dynamics of an unstable unipolar world, an aggressive Russia attempting to rebuild a bipolar world, a fracturing Europe confused about the future, and much of the rest of the world agitated, unstable or impoverished. In short, world leadership may be up for grabs, and it is precisely at this inauspicious time that America is unsure which direction to head: Mr Trump’s eclecticism, erraticism and lack of profundity; or Mrs Clinton’s reflectiveness, depth and global perspective. That they find themselves in this quandary is a testament to the shifting tectonics of American politics which the winner will have to grapple with in the years to come. The outcome of that internal struggle, like next Tuesday’s election, is by no means certain.